Because people Say they want change but only pay for the same-ole same-ole.

Sep 20, 2016

The World’s Expert in the Future of High School?

Since that's a fairly outrageous claim, you deserve some explanation.

…Especially since, not only has no one else so dubbed me, no one has publicly even hinted that I’m close. Certainly, no one has written a piece, “Does this Engineer-Turned Edu-Evangelist Hold the Key to Transforming High School?” [Though they’ve written so about a goofy 17-year-old].

Here’s why I believe that I am, indeed, the word’s foremost expert in the future of high school.

Of the other contenders for that title, there are definitely a few. Certainly a number of people on the staff of KnowledgeWorks; and if not one of them in particular, the team as a whole, and their futurists specifically. Tom Vander Ark and his team at Getting Smart. (He wrote a book.) Grant Lichtman, who also wrote a book (soon three). Ted Dintersmith produced a film, and has spent the past year traveling the nation promoting the project-based vision of high school. A bunch of people gathered by the XQ Institute for their $100 million XQSuperSchools initiative. Also, a number of people and groups work largely outside of school, with the aim of someday changing that institution. LRNG and RemakeLearning foremost in my mind. People who work with what’s called Competency-Based Learning, notably Chris Sturgis of Competency Works, Nick Donahue & staff of the Nellie Mae Foundation, and Colleen Broderick and others at the Donnell-Kay Foundation and the ReSchool Colorado project. . And, two people I’ve not yet met, Seth Andrew and Gisele Huff, seem to have the nearest grasp as to the conditions for disruptive change.

Most of the above have recently written with some frustration over the lack, yet, of a model to scale transformation. Tom most recently wrote such here.